How it all ends
by Ophium
Summary: Another apoca-fic. Another glimpse into what the end might bring. Heavy spoilers for season 5, some guess-work and important characters die. Be warned. Written for the Last Man Standing competition. Beta-ed by Jackfan2.


**How it all ends**

It doesn't end bloody. There isn't any red anywhere around. In fact, there's hardly any color at all there, at the end. But it's certainly sad. So, Dean was kind of right about that.

It doesn't end epically. There are no big explosions, no Hollywood-esque tumbling of tall buildings or boiling of the oceans. There is no panic in the streets or pillaging of shops. In fact, save for a handful of people, nobody even knows it ended. Just the same as no one even knew it had begun.

Bobby is there, and so are Ellen, Jo, Rufus and a handful of unnamed hunters no one ever knew the name, but to whom Mankind owes its existence to. Some lived to tell the tale, to mark their names down in the history books; some were never heard of again. One way or the other, they were all mourned.

Castiel was there too, but so were Zachariah and Raphael and Michael and Lucifer. The four of them together, angelic beings shone so brightly that they made the sun appear dull and shadowy in comparison. Even if the black sky was too dark for anyone to see it.

ooooooooooo00000000000000oooooooooooooooooo00000000000000000000

Turns out, Lucifer was right too; Sam says yes.

But it's not because Sam gives up, or because he is angry at the world or at Dean and wants revenge, or even because he is eaten up by grief and guilt over the consequences of his actions. It's not even because Lucifer tricks or manipulates Sam in to agreeing. No, Sam says yes because it's part of the plan.

The day it happens is special for no other reason other than being the day it finally happens. It's March, for those who still find a calendar important, and the road where it happens is nothing more than a track of red dirt with fields covered in golden wheat on both sides, right in the middle of Kentucky.

Sam stops the stolen grey car that he's been driving for two days straight, steps out, takes a deep, shaky breath and silently consents to be the human flesh of the fallen angel.

The last thing Sam does before losing control of his own body is to allow the lonely tear that escapes his eyes to roll unchecked all the way to his chin and fall, lost, on the dirt.

It's all part of the plan, but it doesn't mean Sam doesn't suffer. That is his penitence.

The plan is Michael's. And the only reason why Sam and Dean know about the archangel's plan is because Dean says yes too.

And no, Dean doesn't do it to prove to his future self that he isn't obstinate enough to risk the end of Mankind on a suborn, pseudo-suffragist notion that his body is his own; he doesn't even do it to save Sam, because Dean had already figured a long time ago that, in the long run, they were both screwed anyway, so there was no point in taking extra measures to avoid that. No, Dean says yes by mistake.

It's November and a flat tire, of all things, sends the Impala into a mad swirl in the middle of the iced road they were driving through. The only thing that steps between them and a fall in to a deep, nameless abyss in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, is a leafless tree.

Dean wakes up to a world of red, the source of the bloody veil somewhere up in his forehead. He sees nothing but tree branches and white, glowing icicles, hanging like Christmas decorations on the lamest Christmas tree ever.

Sam is not inside the car with him, even though Dean keeps hearing his voice. But there is a Sam-shaped hole in the front window and, if he squints his eyes to look beyond the bended metal, Dean can make out eight fingers, blue with cold, poised on the edge of the car's grill and Sam's voice, hoarsely screaming over and over again for help.

The nose of the Impala is crushed against a tree that had decided to grow on the side of the cliff instead of stable ground and even though he can't see him, Dean can feel the weight of his brother, slowly pulling the car with him, towards the long fall down.

Sam's dead if Dean steps out of the car; Sam's dead if Dean moves forward to give him a hand; they're both dead if no one moves.

Dean panics, not because of the hopelessness of their situation, but because he is sure that once Sam realizes their odds, his little brother will let go. And, once Sam let's go, the loss of balance will probably send Dean to the abyss with him.

And then, in that moment, the solution seems awfully clear and simple.

If they both die, there is no more vessel for Lucifer; there is no more vessel for Michael. The world might still end, but it won't be by their hands.

Dean looks out the window. The world moves slowly by, caught in a surreal state of calm laziness, not fast enough now that he's made his choice, apocalypses and life already seeming so far away.

Michael is there. Right outside his window.

Exactly how Dean knows that the small, Asian guy with the purple Mohawk and the leather overcoat is Michael, he has no idea. The fact that the guy is hanging effortlessly in the middle of the air, impervious to flying birds, winter weather and _frigging_ gravity, just hovering like a character out of some manga animé, makes it seem pretty obvious that wings are probably involved in the equation.

Why he's sure it's Michael and not some other angel is anyone's guess. Dean certainly has no clue and his head is too broken and bleeding for him to even consider special bonds between angels and their designed vessels. It's not like he cares or will be around long enough to care.

Dean's ears are kind of screwed up from the crash, and the cold, and the fact that the only thing really registering is the fact that Sam's frantic calls for aid have turned in to silence, which probably means that it will all be over pretty soon.

Michael can stand right there and watch Dean and Sam and their car plunge two hundred feet down and after that, the archangel can do whatever the hell he wants, but he will have to go collect the tiny pieces of his mangled vessel at the bottom of the ravine and probably need a magnifying lens to separate his remains from car parts if he wants a pair of walking legs. At that point, Dean just hopes that the level of damage will dissuade the archangel from even trying.

When Dean feels the car dip forward more sharply and Michael opens his mouth to talk, he doesn't even listen to the question. Dean's automatic response is to just say NO.

When he finds himself being engulfed by an bright light, hot as the sun and so purely white that it eats all colors around, Dean suspects that Michael's question probably wasn't whether he wanted to be his vessel or not, but rather if he wanted to keep on fighting alone.

Dean says yes by mistake, but the choice is still his.

It's like being stuck in the biggest rewind machine in the history of big-assed rewind machines. All of a sudden, Dean finds himself back on the icy road with Sam right beside him, instead of splattered at the bottom of a ravine. That gives him two seconds of pure relief, until he realizes that he's not alone.

The archangel doesn't take over him, even though he could and there would be nothing Dean could do to really stop him. That alone is enough for them to trust Michael enough to sit and listen when the archangel explains _the plan_ to them. The fact that they now share the same space and cells, meant Dean could feel the archangel's loneliness and sorrow as his own; the depth of those emotions go a long way in making Dean more sympathetic too.

Anna had told him that angels could not feel a thing. She was wrong about that being true for archangels as well.

Michael has had a long time to think about his past actions and their consequences. He fought Lucifer in the very beginning of time and they'd been apart ever since.

Michael missed his brother. And the guilt of being the one to send him away was all consuming and painful.

There are no regrets, though.

Michael understood his father's reasons; he knew that, given the chance, Lucifer would destroy his father's latest creation on jealousy alone. Michael could not allow that to happen. From the very first moment they were presented to him, Michael had learned to love humans, if only because they were truly his father's most precious work of art.

And the longer God was missing from his life, the more important and priceless that work became.

Lucifer hadn't been allowed to win before. He wouldn't be allowed to win now.

Oooooo00000000000oooooooooooo0000000000000ooooooooooo0000000000

It all happened exactly as Dean had seen it, only it wasn't in 2014. It was much sooner.

It was just the two of them, Sam and Dean, there in the end; but all the others were nearby, volunteers to a battle in which they were well aware of being nothing but expendable pawns. But Lucifer had brought his pawns as well and someone had to keep them busy while the checkmate was being set up.

Some of the hunters lived, some died, and to this day, some are still fighting their way in to be either one or the other. They all played their parts.

The angels were fighting too. Zachariah thought he was going to witness the end and the glory of Heaven. One by one as the seals were broken, Zachariah and all the angels faithful to his cause, stood by and watched as the world was thrust into peril. They were the first ones to be defeated and cast into damnation. One fallen angel had risen; a horde of new ones fell in his place.

It didn't happen in a garden either; it was on an empty beach, angry ocean beating furiously against the rocks in the shoreline, gusts of wind bringing salt and moist air to their lips. The air smelled of copper and ash. Oceans weren't boiling, but it had started to rain blood.

The sky was black, cut at times by flashes of white, stripes of intense light crisscrossing the vast expanse like pulsing veins. There was no thunder though. No even one. The world was silent, muted in to submission.

Lucifer was still dressed in white, that part was still right. He was the only bright and clean spot in the sand. He wasn't wearing any shoes, though. The fallen angel enjoyed the touch of sand on the soles of his borrowed feet.

Dean's neck still ended up under his foot, Michael's presence hidden from view, his light obscured by Dean's torment, and Lucifer's senses distracted by Sam's anguish.

It was envy that caused the first battle; righteousness was his downfall then. It was vengeance that fueled the second... arrogance brought him down just as efficiently.

Lucifer was sure that Sam would say yes because it was the right thing to do; he was wrong.

Lucifer was sure that Dean would never say yes, because that was his spirit; he was wrong.

Lucifer knew he would win because Dean would never kill Sam; he was wrong.

Lucifer never saw him coming. One minute he was gloating in the savory snappy sound of Dean's neck breaking, basking in the wondrous emptiness of his lifeless, green eyes; and the next, there was a hand, fingers made of light, thrusting inside his chest and ripping him out of Sam's body.

Without the cover of burrowed muscles, blood and bones, Lucifer made good of his name. It was not morning, it was in fact past midday, but a there was no doubt that a Star was shinning in that lonely stretch of sand.

Michael, just as bright and blinding as his brother, joined him on the sand, his hands gripping tight the wrists of his lost brother. "I have missed you," he whispered. "Come home," a choir of voices joined him, coming deep from within the warrior angel.

"We have missed you," Raphael and Castiel and all the hordes of angels on the earth and Heaven, whispered, their combined lights surrounding the struggling, fallen brother. "Come home."

There was no one there to see it. There was no one there to witness the moment when Lucifer lost the battle and the Star was fractured into a million pieces of light.

The pieces spread and flutter, each finding a new home in a different angel. Michael smiled as he felt his brother rejoin them, a small piece of radiance, bright enough to light the world, burrowing in to his chest like a drop of water on a quiet lake.

Two pieces of light did not join the rest of the heavenly bound beings. They stood and hovered above the sand, orphans of a place to stay, refusing to follow the rest.

Shyly, they linger over the two fallen human warriors. Lucifer's vessel was dead. Michael's vessel was dead. Lying on the cold sand, they were both smiling, the tips of their fingers touching where their hands had fallen.

The ocean, quiet now that order had been restored, had slowly sneaked forward over the sand, wave upon wave gently caressing their feet, offering to bring them shelter in its depths.

The two pieces of light silently asked for permission. They would be honored to share the souls of such honored men. They would embrace the opportunity to give life back to the ones who had made it all possible.

They were refused.

There was a plan, and the plan had always ended in death. The Winchesters had asked only for one condition: in the end, they wanted to be together.

The end.


End file.
